Marwah Abdalla, MD, clinical cardiologist and cardiac intensivist at NYP/Columbia.
Hypertension is one of the leading risk factors for heart disease and death and also the origin of many healthcare disparities.
“It’s a treatable disease, and unfortunately, as a medical community, we’ve struggled with getting one of the most leading risk factors for heart disease under control,” Dr. Abdalla says. “Over the past several years, there’s been an increase in and worsening of hypertension-related mortality, as well as blood pressure control.”
Dr. Abdalla’s research lies in understanding why that is and what can be done about it. Since 2014, she has been collaborating with the Jackson Heart Study, which follows one of the largest cohorts of Black adults to ever be studied in the United States in order to uncover why this population suffers more from hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
“ Black people have high rates of hypertension, and there’s a multitude of reasons for that,” says Dr. Abdalla. “What are the historical reasons for this? Obviously, racism has had a huge impact on the health of underrepresented groups within the U.S., not just on Black adults.”
The next step for Dr. Abdalla, then, is looking at effective implementation strategies to improve hypertension management and blood pressure control across the country.
“ From a research perspective, we have to identify and target multilevel factors—including at the structural, environmental, community, and healthcare system levels—that can be used to improve healthcare, particularly for vulnerable populations,” she says. “What we do on the research and clinical side can impact families and their descendants across generations.”